For me it's the self-consciousness of being a bad sleeper that drives me to seek another bed, not the inadequacy of my partner, former partners, since I have none now. But my miserable sleeping habits keep the other person awake. So, in my case, having to pee a hundred times a night, I sit there and suffer and try to wait as long as possible till the pain becomes unbearble, when, if I'd been sleeping in the other room, I'd already have been relaxed hours ago.

Healthy sleepers just can't imagine how difficult it is to sleep when there's a physical problem. In truth, bed-sharing is for the ultra-healthy, those of very, very healthy body and mind. I remember when I was young no one thought twice of these problems. They were simply dealth with. But this same bed theory is actaully very new, on a historical level, and in most societies it had never occured to people that spooning for eight straight hours without even twitching was actaully mandatory. In short, your feelings get hurt because, on some level, it's just hard to believe that the other person isn't kind of faking the pain to get away from you, or pretending it's a physical problem just because they dislike intimacy and so on.

But look at it from other factors. Has one's conversational life gotten worse? Does the person like to be with you less overall? Has the relationship been deteriorating in other areas? Is there a real sense that the partner is sexually turned off to the other partner? If not, then it's quite likely the sleeping problem is only a sleeping problem. One way me and my ex resolved it, and we made it for five years, a victory for this day and age, was that we had daytime cuddle sessions for an hour or two here and there. But we did these at a time where there was no pressure or duty to fall asleep. And, if I feel asleep next to her for an hour or two, great. If not, no big deal, we got in some good closeness. But the other days of the week, or at night, the partner has to get up and go to work, and is already a bit keyed up about that, and then if they can't relax because they need to toss and turn or move around or get up a lot, then the self-consciousness and confinement can become maddening because then the bad sleeper is thinking about what a horrible work day it will be and so on.

In other words, if a person really dislikes being intimate with another person, they won't just draw away on the co-bedding front, they'll also be pulling away in other areas too. Plus, you may find, as other hurt spouses did, that after they finally got used to the idea, that they liked it better anyway. For one thing, default intimacy, that is the rule that we will be close every night automatically, really makes the decision to feel close rather disappear, so that the getting next to each other becomes a ritual rather than a gift. It's very exciting to have one's partner "DECIDE" they want to come into one's room and cuddle, as opposed to them shlepping over there to give out the mandatory quota of hugging. There was even a show on television where they interviewed separate bed couples, and to a tee, they all said it was way more romantic, because it was not a duty to lay next to the other person, but something one found one missed and sought out, which made the other partner feel more attractive after all. Put another way, since it's my job to simply force myself to be close upon command each night, how would one know if this particular night, I really was moved by a particular feeling or a spontaneous rush of love, since the way one would communicate it would be to go up to the other person and be close, but since closeness is already mandated and obligatory and forced, then all moods dissolve into just routine. This was the perspective of the folks in this documentary.

So, at first, due to health, I got into this separate beds thing, but later, I found it to be truly more intimate and genuine than the "duty to march to this bed every night". In other words, one is made to stop and think, "How do I feel? Do I feel close? If so, isn't that great? If not, then maybe that needs to be looked at?"

These are my reflections. I hope some have been helpful.

Truly,

Shaku.